SENA KOLEVA

Research focus:Morality, romantic attraction and relationships, political ideology, religious beliefs and cultural differences.

Originally from:Bulgaria

Obsession:Kittens

If you ever wanted to shine at a dinner party you could do worse than to bring up the scientific study of love, sex, and attraction. No longer are we left to rely on poets, philosophers, or our grandmothers to tell us what love is all about. Recently researchers have taken love into the lab, and their findings are often startling.

Q. WHY DO WE LOVE?

A. Human romantic love is a puzzling anomaly. Long-term monogamous relationships are exceedingly rare -- less than 3 percent of mammals form monogamous relationships. So why are we the exception?

The dominant theory holds that love is an evolved adaptation that contributed to our survival as species. The shift to walking upright changed our ancestors' pelvic structure in a way that narrowed the birth canal in females, which necessitated that newborns be very small. Human babies are extremely helpless at birth and take a long time to mature sexually, so they benefit greatly from the continuous care and dedication of both parents.

Thus, it is thought, love is a commitment mechanism that encourages the mom and dad to stay together and raise a healthy, sexually mature individual that can pass on their genes. So if you sometimes feel like a fool for love, remember that it's in your nature.

Q. WHAT IS LOVE?

A. The ultimate answer to this question may vary across time, cultures, and individuals, but at the biological level love is, arguably, oxytocin. The hottest thing in love research, oxytocin is a brain chemical that plays an important role in social relationships, especially parental attachment and pair bonding. It floods females' brains during childbirth and breast-feeding, contributing to mother-child bonding. In males, an oxytocin-like chemical called vasopressin is linked to relationship quality, and is implicated in paternal investment and monogamy. Oxytocin is also released by both sexes during intimacy and orgasm. It has been shown to increase trust, empathy, and generosity toward strangers, lower anxiety and stress, dampen fear, enhance social skills in various mental disorders, and even speed up wound healing.

However, far from a magical "love potion", oxytocin has also been shown to increase envy, gloating, negative memories, ethnocentrism and even aggression. This suggests that oxytocin might simply strengthen social emotions, both positive and negative. Despite our poor understanding of it, we do know that this chemical functions in the brain's reward centers. We seem "wired" to experience love as pleasurable.

Q. ARE LOVE AND PASSION THE SAME?

A. Most people believe that the feeling of "falling in love" is different from that of long-term attachment and, at a biological level, they are correct. If love is oxytocin, passion is dopamine. Like heroine, cocaine, and other addictive drugs, passion increases the circulation of dopamine in the reward circuits of the brain. This raises the intriguing possibility that people can become addicted to falling in love. Passion also increases norepinephrine (a hormone similar to adrenaline), which narrows attention, increases heart rate, and fosters goal-oriented behavior.

Unlike passion, long-term romantic attachment is associated with the release of oxytocin and endorphins, the body's natural painkillers. These chemicals induce a sense of calm and peaceful contentment and are involved in the formation of habits. Love, in this sense, is like driving an old Volvo.

Curiously, some couples who've been married for many years report that they still feel passionate as the day they met. Brain scans of such couples reveal that the chemicals associated with passion are present at levels similar to those in the brains of the newly in love. They're still riding a red hot convertible.

Q. WHAT IS PHYSICALLY ATTRACTIVE?

A. Despite a common perception that beauty is "in the eye of the beholder", studies have shown that people from diverse cultures generally agree on what is hot or not. Even babies prefer to look at attractive over non-attractive faces. This suggests that perceptions of beauty are fundamental and universal. Three features that boost attractiveness are facial symmetry, averageness, and sexual dimorphism. First, faces whose two halves are more symmetrical are rated as more attractive. Second, when researchers use software to blend multiple faces into a single composite that 'averaged' face is rated as more attractive than the ones used to create it. Attractiveness is also boosted by exaggerated feminine/masculine features (small chin, full lips, large eyes, and high cheekbones in females, and small eyes, prominent eyebrows, and wide jaws in males).

Aside from facial features, smell may also affect how much 'chemistry' we have with someone, e.g. women are attracted to the scents of men whose immunity genes are most dissimilar to their own. Such a preference may have evolved because children whose parents carry different immunity genes are likely to be resistant to a greater number of diseases.

Q. IS THAT ALL THERE IS TO IT?

A. Even though we can't do much in the way of improving our symmetry, averageness, or smell there is, fortunately, plenty more to being desirable in the long run. Our appeal can and does depend on our expressions, personality, and behavior. For example, one study found that a smiling face was rated as more attractive than the same face with a neutral expression. Also, sometimes just 'being around' can help. The so called "mere exposure effect" is a well-established psychological phenomenon which shows that the more we're exposed to a stimulus, the more we like it. This has been shown to hold true for everything from people, to music, to meaningless alphabetical characters. And lastly, and perhaps most obviously, who you are matters! One study showed that across more than 30 cultures the top three most desirable characteristics in a mate were warmth/kindness, intelligence, and an interesting personality.

And this is probably the best advice you can give your dinner audience. There are many people with attractive features and scents out there, but if you want to be liked and loved in the long run, being a good and interesting person is probably your best bet.

Jim & Sandy: 45 years

It was love at first fingerprint for couple married 45 years.

By THOMAS MARTINEZ

ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Jim and Sandy Carney met in 1967 when Jim fingerprinted her and processed her security clearance at Rockwell’s Autonetics division in Anaheim.

There was an instant attraction between the two.

“He got me so flustered, I left through the wrong door and set off all the alarms,” Sandy said. “My head was spinning.”

Sandy, a 19-year-old farm girl from Iowa, was quite a bombshell, Jim said. He was 23.

The first time she had walked past the office door, his coworker turned to him and said, “Holy cow! Did you see that?”

He walked over to the door to take a look, and there were three other guys sticking their heads out their doors doing the same.

They went to lunch the next day at the first Knowlwood burger restaurant, which was in a barn on a nearby farm.

One month later they were engaged, and six months after that they got married.

“You just know when you meet the right person.” Jim said. “We recognized instantly the qualities we were looking for. We had the same goals, interests and desire to make a life together.”

“There was really never any question that we were right for each other,” Sandy said.

Jim was honest and full of integrity, Sandy said. And he wanted to build a family together.

They’ve been married now for 45 years and it’s still going strong. What’s their secret?

“We always have something to look forward to – together,” Jim said. “We think in terms of a team. We put each other’s needs above our own. And the foundation is friendship. You have to be best friends."

After raising three children and retiring from the real estate business in Florida, they traveled the country in a 45-foot motor home for two years and then returned to Southern California and settled in Irvine.

They’re almost through their bucket list, which included owning and riding Harley-Davidson motorcycles and traveling to every country in the world. They’ve been on 41 cruises.

“We’re enjoying the day to day,” Sandy said. “We’ve made a lot of friends here and there is so much to do.”

Jay & Sue: 43 years

First-grade romance leads to fun, friendship and back to romance.

By THOMAS MARTINEZ

ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Jay and Sue Crawford first crossed paths in preschool and became boyfriend and girlfriend in the first-grade at Wild Rose Elementary in Monrovia.

But in the summer after second-grade Jay’s parents divorced, and he moved away to live with his mother in Whittier.

Sue would see Jay’s father around town occasionally. She and Jay exchanged a few letters in their junior high years, but nothing ever came of it.

The years went by and they both went off to different colleges. But Sue was a patient of Jay’s father, who was an optometrist.

One day, in the summer between their freshman and sophomore years of college, Jay’s father encouraged him to call Sue and ask her out. He had just broken up with a girlfriend of nine months. So he did. It was June, 1968. And they hadn’t seen each other in person since second grade.

The first time he called, she told him she couldn’t go out. She didn’t tell him at the time, but she had been dating someone steadily for three years.

He called her again, and they spoke for 40 minutes.

He called her a third time, which wasn’t typical for Jay.

“I was pretty shy back then,” he said.

This time, she agreed to go out with him. Though she had a boyfriend, she decided to try something new.

He took her to a high school football game. (She’s a big football fan, like her dad). She had a great time.

Sue’s boyfriend wasn’t too happy about the date, and they broke up.

Jay and Sue dated for about nine months.

“We had so much fun together,” Sue said.

Jay proposed to Sue on the diving board of his mother’s home in Whittier. They married six months later in the same church where they attended preschool. They were both 20.

In 1979, they moved to Irvine, where they raised two children, Scott and Chelsea.

They still live and work in Irvine. Sue is the office manager for the accounting department at UC Irvine. Jay has an architectural firm that mainly designs custom homes.

They love to travel and still have lots of fun together, they said.

So, what’s the key to a long-lasting, happy marriage?

“Marry your best friend,” Jay said.

Moshe & Leny: 49 years

Their secret? They laugh a lot, ‘and no silent treatment.’

By THOMAS MARTINEZ

ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Leny Fischel was on a ship headed to Israel to vacation and learn Hebrew when a young man she had met told her she just had to meet a friend of his.

This friend was as crazy and life-loving as she was, the young man explained.

“I told him thanks, but no thanks,” Leny said.

But while in Israel, where she was staying with her aunt and uncle, she ran into the same young man from the ship at a café in Tel Aviv.

This time he insisted that she meet his friend. She agreed, and that night she met Moshe Shenker.

“He was very friendly and good looking,” she said.

When they sat down, the table was dirty. So she used her recently learned broken Hebrew and asked the waiter to “shower” the dirty table.

“Immediately, I knew she was going to be my wife,” Moshe said.

They had a great evening and began dating nightly.

“What can I say – love took over,” she said.

On their third date he kissed her for the first time, on her forehead. That’s when it hit Leny. She had a boyfriend back in the states, but she knew Moshe was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

Six weeks after they met, they married in Israel. It was 1963. He was 24; she was 21.

Then they went on a six-week, low-budget honeymoon travelling all across Europe in a tiny Fiat 600 car with no radio.

“We laughed and sang the whole way,” Leny said. “We were soul mates.”

It was one of the most memorable, free-spirited times of their lives: no jobs, no parents, no kids, no responsibilities.

“We still talk about our honeymoon,” Leny said.

They moved to the United States, where they ran several businesses and raised two daughters, Tammy and Dori. They retired to a house on the Israeli coastline but moved to Irvine in 2000 to be near their daughters and grandchildren.

Their marriage is still sizzling after 49 years, they said.

“I adore him,” Leny said.

What’s their formula?

“Support each other in everything, and laugh together, a lot,” Moshe said. “And no silent treatment.”

“Never let things cook inside you,” Leny added. “If you have a problem, you have to talk about it, even if it leads to a fight.”

Audrey & Fred: 70 years

Longtime sweethearts still like to kiss.

By THOMAS MARTINEZ

ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Fred and Audrey Fredensburg married in 1942 – and they’re still going strong.

The longtime sweethearts still hold hands and kiss regularly, have barbecues for friends and family in their back yard and dine at the Chili’s on Alton Parkway every Saturday night.

Audrey, 89, and Fred, 91, met at Atherton Baptist Church in Los Angeles and dated for about three years before tying the knot.

They live in Irvine’s Deerfield village and formerly had a home in Woodbridge.

Audrey likes to walk around her neighborhood and gets her nails and hair done every Friday.

Fred works out at the Irvine Rancho Senior Center.

“They are in love with each other and in love inshould this be with???? Irvine,” said their daughter, Julie Fredensburg-Tyner.

And they are wonderful parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, she added.

Fred served in the U. S. Navy for two years during World War II.

Audrey was secretary to the president of Bank of America.

In their younger days, both were active as volunteers in YMCA, Children's Home Society and PTA, Fredensburg-Tyner said.

User Agreement

Keep it civil and stay on topic. No profanity, vulgarity, racial
slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about
tragedies will be blocked. By posting your comment, you agree to
allow Orange County Register Communications, Inc. the right to
republish your name and comment in additional Register publications
without any notification or payment.